Sunday, 24 July 2016

There have been a few questions posed via Twitter and Facebook recently. Thanks to those people who posed a question. Here are my answers.

Glyni Lynn: What things from home did you miss? I'm a big film buff and I really missed the IMAX cinema at Metrocentre. There were some blockbusters shown there during the run. I missed simple things like having a meal at a table and having a shower. Most of all I missed my freedom. The run was like hard labour and I would return to my cell in the RV every night.

Ben Scott: What was your fuel of choice while running and while recovering? If you had to pick one song to represent this leg of the run what would it be? I think the fuel that worked best for me was a simple banana. Easy to digest and they seem to offer energy very quickly. In terms of recovery, yet again, Cherry Active, was used again as it was during runs across the USA and Australia. I drank Beet Active every morning and this may have been one of the reasons why I was able to run further than any of the previous segments around the world.

I'll be putting together a short video of photos to the key piece of music soon. I honestly don't know what tune represents the run right now but I'm going to have a good think about it. I listened to a lot of music.

@Golfing_grannie: Surprised you thought this worse than Australia. You seemed in a bad state towards the end in Aus. Away from civilisation more too. Do you think it's because this one is so recent and the bad memories have faded? I think this one was worse as I was away from Donna for longer. I was very homesick some days. I tried my best to keep this issues away from social media and the support team as best as I could. Only Donna really knows how hard I hit rock bottom some days.

Emily Gettins: What surprised you most about the run?
Which was your favourite climb in the mountains? The extra mileage that I did, day in day out, just to get to the designated end point was an unwelcome surprise. Second to that and on a more positive note was just how friendly the people were all over the route (except for those I encountered in Italy unfortunately). Croatia and Serbia were amongst some of the friendliest places that I have ever ran.

With almost 40 climbs done it's hard to pick a favourite. For pure scenery, it has to be the Col d'Aubisque in the Pyrenees. For difficulty, it would be Alpe d'huez.

Andrew Coles: If you logged them, what was the fastest/slowest mile you ran during the challenge? I'll have to check Garmin Connect in due course but I remember a 36 minute mile coming out of the Pyrenees on a very steep and rocky off-road section. The fastest was just over 10 minutes at 10:11 I think. It felt like I was sprinting. Slow and steady definitely won this race.

Peter Wilson: What happened at the border!! Ican't say as we are still in the country and its a matter of national security.
I'll talk about it at the Around the World Ball in October though.

Simon Ben Oxley:Do you listen to anything when you run, how do you entertain yourself while running for hours? I listened to a lot of different music on my iPod. I would listen to 1 movie or stageshow soundtrack per day. I listened to the West Side Story soundtrack many times as strange as that may sound. Other forms of entertainment were to speak to Donna on the phone during the final few miles of every day. Listening to Stobbsy speak French phrases in various languages while we ran filled in a lot of time.

The difficult times were when I was running alone and ran out of things to think about. I'll speak more about this in a future blog post.

Gordon Stuart: What is the best view you saw on the run? The views from the Col d'Aubisque in the Pyrenees were spectacular. The view right back up to the Col du Glandon from the Col de la Madeleine many miles away really gave me a sense of how far and how hard I'd ran that day. "I've just run that" I said many times.

Seeing the street children cheering and clapping at the finish line in Belgrade has to be the best view of this and any run.

Catherine Cape: How are your feet? They are nowhere near as bad as at the end of the run across the USA or Australia. There seems to be a lot of internal blisters but very little surface damage. I don't think it will take Alison at the Cradlewell Clinic too long to fix them. In fact, she is the main reason why they are in such good condition.

Andrew Skelton: Best venue of the trip and which day was the best shower in the world? I think the best venue is tied between Croatia and Serbia. The kindness shown to Donna, Richard and I was something very special indeed.

The best shower turned out to be a bath in the British Ambassador's residence in Belgrade. After 11 days of not showering I left a very large tide mark in it.

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I'm currently on a fundraising campaign to run 20,000 miles Around The World in aid of charities in the North East of England.

Whilst not pursuing a world record, the run is following two aspects of the Guinness World Record criteria used, not in running, but in cycling for “fastest circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle”; To travel a minimum of 18,000 miles (28,968 km) and to travel through two approximate antipodal points (i.e. opposite points on the planet).

The purpose of using the criteria is to, at least, give credibility to the claim that I will “run around the world”.

The distance of my chosen route is 20,000 miles (32,189 km). The chosen antipodal points are La Coruña in Spain and Christchurch in New Zealand.

The run Around The World is split into 9 stages, some of which have been completed already: